20 Spring 2016 Applegater
OPINIONS
River Right: How many monsters in the room?
BY TOM CARSTENS
When I first took up kayaking, it
quickly became apparent that I could use
some schooling. Understanding how to
control my puny little vessel in all that
big water was crucial to my survival.
Applegate Valley settlers thought
schooling was a good idea, too. They
tucked numerous small schools into
the valley so their kids could get a
basic education without having to
walk—or ride a horse—too far. It was
a simpler time—no standardized tests,
no compulsory attendance, no state
bureaucracy, no teachers’ unions. Some
things haven’t changed, though: teachers
still fork over their own money to help
pay for stuff in their classrooms, and
parents still organize endless fund drives.
Ex-Governor Kitzhaber called
this funding gap the “Tyrannosaurus
in the Room.” Essentially, it’s the
difference between what the state doles
out and what the school districts want
to spend. Beginning in 1850, we paid
for our public schools through property
taxes; expenditures were controlled
locally. When voters put a cap on
property taxes in 1990, the state took
over. Now, two-thirds of school funding
is controlled by the state.
Where does it go? Oregon’s
Constitution requires the legislature
to fund the school system at sufficient
levels—and to report to us biannually
on how that’s going. Anybody seen that
report? Most estimates figure that we’re
underfunding our schools by just under
two billion dollars per year. Talk about a
monster in the room! Nevertheless, every
other year or so we’re asked to approve a
new tax that will supposedly fix the gap.
So here we go again. Public
employees’ unions are pushing for a
measure, innocuously titled Initiative 28,
to be put on the November ballot that
would establish a new “gross receipts,”
i.e., sales tax on businesses with more
than $25 million in sales. And it ain’t
small—we’re talking $2.6 billion per year.
This represents better than a 25 percent
hike in total tax intake for the state and
the largest tax increase in history. This
could be the “Godzilla in the Room.” The
president of the Senate predicts that this
effort “will tear our state apart.”
We’re told vaguely that all this
largesse ripped from big business will go
straight to our schools and a few public
services. I’m not so sure. Last year, none
of the $72-million corporate kicker went
to the school fund as voters had directed.
Why are the unions pushing this
initiative? Could it have something to do
with the fact that our public employees’
pension liabilities are $20 billion in the
hole? Could this be the “King Kong in
the Room”? We know that the latest
bill for teachers’ pensions in our local
districts will soon come due—to the
tune of millions of dollars. The Oregon
Business Council is skeptical that any
of this money will find its way to the
classroom when we’re dealing with such
a huge pension deficit.
Economists at the Oregon
Investment Council tell us that a tax this
big tends to discourage investment, spark
an out-of-state exodus, cut employment,
and raise prices. Instead of soaking
businesses, maybe we ought to try
asking their advice about what’s needed.
Especially since they’re the ones who will
hire our kids.
Our schools are in trouble.
We’re ranked near the bottom of the
nation in high school graduation rates. It’s
the “Moby Dick in the Room.” A recent
study published by Education Week ranks
Oregon 38th overall in performance and
39th in funding. We get what we pay for.
We d o
have a funding
gap. If we could
somehow
ensure that
Reprinted with permission
from artist Dominic DeVenuta
our tax money
and Willamette Week.
would indeed
find its way into classrooms, who
wouldn’t be supportive? But nobody
ever tells us exactly where the money
is destined. And it’s almost impossible
to verify where it actually ends up. We
deserve better. It’s time for the legislature
to put this mess right.
If you talk to teachers and
parents, you’ll discover that they have a
bazillion ideas on how we can put money
to better use in our system. I’m not sure
the legislators, the bureaucrats, or the
unions are listening to the right folks.
The world is changing rapidly, and
we need to get our kids ready for it. Let’s
not continue to senselessly throw more
money at the monsters in the room.
Tom Carstens • 541-846-1025
Note: To get your head around this issue
a bit better, read “Feed the Beast” by
Pulitzer Prize-winner Nigal Jaquiss at
www.wweek.com/portland/article-24661-
feed_the_beast.html.
CO 2 : Villain or scapegoat?
Denying climate science
BY REX GAROUTTE
BY ALAN JOURNET
With politicians racing to control
CO 2 emissions, we need to rethink the
cause of climate change and understand
that CO 2 levels in the atmosphere are an
indicator and not a cause. Greenhouse
gases don’t let heat in and then keep it
from radiating away. These gases reflect
heat in both directions, giving us a zero
gain.
Of all the atmospheric CO 2 , eight
percent is absorbed by surface plants and
92 percent is absorbed by the oceans with
the current base level of atmospheric
CO 2 at .04 percent. Once in the ocean,
it is used by plants or converted to an
acid or a carbonate. These compounds
will precipitate out and, given time and
pressure, become hydrocarbons again.
Those who have worked with CO 2
know that water’s ability to absorb the
gas is directly related to temperature.
The cooler the water the more CO 2 is
absorbed. To illustrate this, before you go
to bed, take two sodas and open them.
Place one on the counter and one in the
refrigerator. The next morning, pour each
of them in a glass and check which one
still has some carbonation. The coldest
soda will have more carbonation.
These facts about CO 2 mean
it is impossible for the gas to be the
cause of climate change. If it was the
cause, then the planet would go into
a positive feedback: the ocean would
release more CO 2 into the atmosphere,
which would cause more warming, which
would release more CO 2 , and on and on.
So if we use rising atmospheric
CO 2 levels as an indicator of warming,
then what is the cause? My uncle clued
me in to what he thought was the cause,
and the math backs it up. At no time in
the planet’s history has there been this
much warm-blooded biomass. In 1950
the world’s population was around 2.5
billion.
Because of disease, famine, and
war, it took humanity 10,000 years to
get to that level. Thanks to technology,
population growth is now doubling every
40 years. Current estimates are 7.8 billion
people. Each person generates 100 watts
of heat. Add to that all the animals that
we use for food and as pets (700-watt
cows to 10-watt cats), and we see that
warm-blooded biomass becomes a
significant part of the heat on the planet.
This steady source of heat
changes the baseline of the planet’s
heating-cooling cycle. With most human
actions that involve generating heat,
there is a starting point and a stopping
point. These allow the heat to become
part of the heating–cooling cycle and to
eventually be dissipated. Warm-blooded
biomass is only going up, so it changes
the balance point and the planet’s mean
temperature.
Given that the only solution to
the problem is population control, this
becomes an extremely difficult problem
to resolve politically.
I won’t bore you with the math,
which includes numbers like 510 trillion,
but if you are interested in the numbers,
I’ll be glad to email them to you.
In order for me to do my part in
cutting excess biomass heat, I’m going
to give up exercising.
Rex Garoutte • rosellas@apbb.net
Happy Mother’s Day!
Leaders of 196 nations now agree
with the US Department of Defense,
every professional scientific society and
academy that has expressed an opinion,
an increasing number of fossil fuel and
other corporations, and 97 percent of
practicing climate scientists. They all
agree that our planet is warming and that
humans are the primary cause.
Eve n a m i d t h i s re m a rk a b l e
agreement, we still encounter those in
the Applegate Valley who continue to
claim that climate science consensus is a
conspiracy and a hoax. If so, it has to be
the mother of all conspiracies.
Rejecting the science usually relies
on one of two misjudgments: (1) the
warming reflects a natural cycle or (2)
the warming has slowed or stopped for
nearly two decades.
1. It’s a natural cycle
This often flows from the claim that
we are still emerging from the last Ice
Age, which was most intense 18,000 to
20,000 years ago.
Indeed, the last Ice Age was most
severe about 20 millennia ago, but its
primary cause, together with that of the
three Ice Ages overtaking us during the
last two million years, is well understood:
the Milankovitch cycle is a combination
of three sub-cycles involving the Earth’s
orbit around the sun and the tilt of its
axis. Those blaming this cycle for our
current warming should know that the
evidence shows us that these three cycles
in combination are throwing us back into
another Ice Age. They are cooling, not
warming factors.
Another “natural cycle” argument
implicates solar radiation. Though it’s
reasonable, we reject it because solar
radiation has been declining since the
1970s, exactly when warming has been
at its most torrid. A third argument is
volcanic activity. But this is rejected
because volcanos have a net cooling
impact; this effect can be seen by looking
at the global cooling occurring after each
major eruption.
The “natural cycle” explanation is
convenient for those denying human
culpability, but it simply does not pass
muster.
2. Warming has slowed
for nearly two decades
Climate science deniers trot this
explanation out every time there seems
to be a few years’ hiatus in the warming
trend. The deniers now go back to the
magic year of 1998 and argue that
warming since that year has slowed or
halted. The data from 1998 through
about 2010 certainly seems to exhibit
a slowing of the warming trend seen
from 1970 to 1998. Statistical analysis
of this pattern reveals, however, that the
apparent slowdown is an illusion and
the warming is no different from the
previous trend.
But two further lines of evidence
lead to a rejection of this claim: First,
our focus on atmospheric temperature
obscures the real story. In fact, only
about two percent of retained heat energy
contributes to atmospheric warming,
while over 93 percent ends up in our
oceans. This increases oceanic energy
content. The ocean trend of rising heat
energy content has never slowed. (It’s
called global warming, not atmospheric
warming, for a reason.) Second, for those
who cherry-pick subsets of a large data set
to make their point about a confounding
trend, an inspection of the micro-trend
See CLIMATE SCIENCE, page 21